Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in an excerpt of his poem Haunted Houses, wrote on the material and ethereal realms and the interactions between the residents of each.
“The spiritual world
Lies all about us, and its avenues
Are open to the unseen feet of phantoms
That come and go, and we perceive them not,
Save by their influence, or when at times
A most mysterious
Providence permits them
To manifest themselves to mortal eye.
Though I close mine eyes,
I am awake, and in another world,
Dim faces of the dead and of the absent
Come floating up before me.
So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this”